Measure Twice, Cut Once

Two very busy days and the solar panels now have a new home, and from the voltage meter we will have allot more power. Due to the house getting a new roof  I had the to move the panel which where on the roof. Now with the help of my two little helpers the panel can be pointed into the sun as it cuts across the sky.

Here it is before we load it up with the panels, testing to see if it will turn with some weight on it , we still need to slide it up to the top of the post.

Now we are ready to wire it up and slide it to the top of the post.

All wired up and putting out 49 volts DC back to the battery pack.

All ready for more of those sunny Alberta days.

Frost has hit the homestead and so we dug our potatoes and picked our squash. A very small crop but it is our first crop and with all the grass sod in the garden I‘m very happy with it. My girls came out with their Gator to help their old Pa to bring in the crop and we had a wonderful time looking at all the shapes that potatoes come in and carrying the winter squash to the house.

Things are going slow but we are making sawdust and lots of noise, and a few things are starting to take shape. Here we have the new gable wall taking shape, we are going from the straw over to stick frame. Stick frame is very fast compared to the straw clay building method. As we go along you will begin to see the roof outline and notice that the South side of the house will have a very long slope. This is part of the passive solar collector part of the house. As we are buildingthe house to be a big solar collector that we just happen to live in, with the end goal to be a self heating  house.

A few days later and we have the panel board going up, we have scaffolding up to help makes things a  bit safer. We had to stop here and build a solar rack to move the panel to as they where on the other side of the new wall and mostly in the shade.

On the homestead I like to walk around to do fence repairs and other small jobs, it keeps me in shape and I can listen to the birds and my children as they like to tag along with me most of the time. Now that my children are getting bigger 5 and 2 I can’t carry them and my tools, so I got an idea that has been working very well. I went down to the toys R us folks and bought them a little gator, ride on electric car.

The thing works great I would buy another one if I needed it very happy with it so far, we have been throught some pretty rough country and I only have to help with a push now and then. My daughters can even carry a few things in the box for dear old dad. The best thing is it is electric and it’s very quiet we charge the battery off our solar panels or wind mills.

I have always wanted an electric car but I’m still waiting for a new kind of battery to power one, I think allot of people are waiting for this new battery.